Thirsty Steam Engines

Remember, Walla Walla was founded on wheat.  In 1899 they raised it for about 25 cents a bushel and the average yield was 25 bushels per acre.  I  tried to discover what wheat prices were back then but didn't find a quick answer.  If  you can discover it, let me know!  The Walla Walla Daily Statesman reported in 1899 that residents:

Babcock had  5,300 acres in wheat
Reser had       4,500 acres
Pickard had    2,800 acres
Upton had      2,200 acres
Bradbury had 2,200 acres
Struthers had  2,000 acres
Crocker had   2,000 acres
Wheeler had  1,500 acres
Wilson had    1,400 acres
Welch had     1,200 acres

Dat's a LOTTA WHEAT !!!  No wonder they need new-fangled machinery, and those steam engines were thirsty beasts.  Some early steam engines were the Case, Advance Rumley, Russel, Minneapolis, Best Gaar Scott...  Lots of competition for the farmer's dollar.

But waggoners were still necessary.  So, someone built a water wagon just for those thirsty steam engines:
 

You drive it down into the nearest body of water and let 'er fill herself up!  (Worst case scenario had the driver using a bucket to fill it - what a major bummer THAT would have been!!!!)

Another specialized wagon was the "header box" wagon that was used in harvesting the wheat:

This baby was enormous.  As long as a wagon's axles were kept well-greased and out of the winter weather, they lasted a long, long time.  Why one side was twice as high as the other I'm not sure.  Maybe it was as wide as a stalk of wheat was tall, and the "head" stacked higher than the base of the stalk so it needed a higher side?  Nowadays agriculture colleges like Texas A&M have downsized crops so that all the growth is in the harvestable part of a plant and the stalk is a very minimum height.  Pretty smart, huh?  I wouldn't know whether to downsize the wagon or just load more crop into it...

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Canning the Harvest

While we were in Walla Walla, our host home asked us to take care of their vegetable garden while they visited their condo in Maui.  Okey-dokey.  (We tended their million rose bushes, too.)

Well, we harvested way too many cucumbers to eat - so I canned a dozen or so jars of Bread and Butter pickles:

My recipe makes for some pr-r-et-ty spicy pickles - with sliced onions, too!

Toward the end of harvest, women, then and now, end up with a bit of this and a bit of that.  I suppose that's how relishes came about.  My momma's recipe calls for apples and onions, colorful red or yellow bell peppers, cabbage...  You grind it and chop it and and cook it, drain it overnight, can it (I don't know why it's called "canning" when WE always put it in jars!) then give it a hot bath for 5 or 10 minutes.  Take it out, wait overnight for them to cool enough for a vacuum to be created and seal the product for a long, long shelf life.  (I think it's neat to sit quietly reading and hear those jars seal themselves with a slight, quiet, metallic "thunk.")  But, this is not the end of the season, and I don't have "a bit of this and a bit of that."  Besides, we have jars of relish (we call it chow-chow) at home from a year or so ago...

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Ox Shoe Chute; Wagons and Sleighs

Again at Fort Walla Walla...

Did you know that oxen have to be shoe'd just like horses?  How would you like to be the ferrier that gets to shoe that ox?  Well, those guys are smarter than you think; they built a chute to hold that critter up and still:

When I study it closely it reminds me of a guillotine.  A pulley system lifts the top panel, the ox puts his head through, and the panel is lowered.  My cousin in Chillicothe used to use a similar contraption to hold his cows for innoculations and spraying their eyes with "purple stuff" to prevent pink eye.  The only difference is that an ox wouldn't lift his foot to receive the shoe and this jobber-do came equipped with a sling that would pass under the ox and then be ratcheted up to literally lift the ox off the ground so that the ferrier could get those shoes on.  (Cows don't need shoeing because all they are ever expected to do is walk around eating.  My father-in-law always wondered how black cows could eat green grass and give white milk...)

This is a "dray" wagon - think 18-wheeler flat bed's of today.  This would certainly load easier than today's 18-wheelers:  look at that itty-bitty ground clearance!  You'd think back then they'd need MORE clearance!  Maybe big stuff gets cross-country in a train car and across town on a dray...

And then there's the sleigh.  (They used to heat bricks, rocks, or put pans of hot coals in the footboards of the sleigh to keep feet warm and toasty.)  This was definitely for people transport.  Not a lot of wagon work done in the winter time.  Winter time was used for repairing harnesses and equipment in order to be ready for spring planting. 

It was time to be carding and spinning and weaving all that wool sheared from the sheep, too.  The kids had time out from a lot of their chores to catch up on school work they couldn't get to because the crops had to be planted or tended or harvested.

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Marilyn Monroe and the Washington State Pen

Inside a Tough Prison

WALLA WALLA'S 

RADICAL REFORMS

 

 Man, I am always surprised at the things we find and where we find them! 

Seems the Washington State Penitentiary was notorious in the 1960's and 70's.  Located in Walla Walla, Washington it was just about 8 miles from Oregon.  Maybe that's where this contraption got it's name:

 

It's called an Oregon Boot, and it was meant to replace the "classic" ball-and-chain.  It was advertised as "the best security for the most desperate criminals."

These guys really were desperate.  Look at some of the things guards managed to confiscate inside the prison:

.22 Caliber Zip Gun

Book Bomb - Built by an inmate to assassinate another convict who testified against him.

The original prison was known as the Washington Territorial Prison because Washington wasn't a state yet.  It was built for $60,000 and opened in May 1887 with 97 convicts from a contract prison (we seem to be going back to those now!) in the Tacoma area of Washington.

There is a list of rules, or duties, that the convicts had to follow.  They're pretty interesting, so if you ever get up Walla Walla way, be sure to go to Fort Walla Walla and find the building that house the prison artifacts.

 

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Let The Spinning Wheel Spin

Continuing at Fort Walla Walla...

First you raise the sheep.  Then you load up the wagon and go out to the pasture...

take the sheep into the wagon and shear the sheep. (I guess the guitar is for evenings around the campfire.) 

(Did you know that in Montana it's against the law to have a sheep with you in the cab of your pickup without a chaperone?  And you thought Granpa knew useless trivia!)

Then you shear the sheep and "card" the wool (to get all the fibers going in the same direction).  Then you spin the fibers into yarn ...

See the little spinning wheel on the right?
And the giant spinning wheel on the left, and ...

... a loom in the center? 

You weave the yarn into fabric, cut it, and probably sew it by hand into homespun clothing.  One could always tell homespun at a glance because the yarn (and therefore the fabric) would not be smooth - there would be bumps and lumps where the yarn didn't spin perfectly.

There are a bunch of different kinds of spinning wheels:  Saxony wheels (horizontal), castle wheels (vertical), Norwegian wheels (horizontal on a bench) and what we call "modern," which can take on many forms.  Before the spinning wheel was invented (somewhere around the 1100's) yarn was spun by hand using a spindle and distaff.  The distaff would hold the fibers so they didn't get tangled until you could spin or twist them into yarn.  I'm thinkin' it would take a VERY coordinated lady to accomplish this task!

(Thank you, Wikipedia)

While we were in Virginia I bought a couple of these.  I'm waiting for our kids to buy some sheep so that I can start spinning yarn.  LOL !!!

The harness maker,

though, might get to use the sewing machine because it's mighty hard to push a needle through leather straps...

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Log Homes

We live in a log home back in Texas.  It's Granpa's dream home because it's log; it's my dream home because it's home.

So we know a LOT about log homes.  I'm always interested in how the corners go together.

Obviously, if you notch them they fit together more securely AND there's less of a gap between the logs that you'll have to go back and fill in with mud.  The logs in our home are 6" thick, tongue-and-groove, the grooves are filled with sealant, and then the logs are stacked and spiked together with 14" screws.  It's virtually impregnable by wind, water, bugs...  A wrap around porch shades from the Texas sun and double pane windows prevent heat transfer.   A "forest" on the east side for morning shade and cooling breezes, add in the 100+ year old oak tree on the west and a grape arbor, and our utility bills are minimal - even for Texas!

See how thick the mud filling is on this house because the logs weren't notched?  I suppose if winter is closing in and you don't have time to notch, mudding is quicker.  Next year, turn this into a "dependency" and build that woman a proper home!